James' World 2

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A voice says: “Close your left hand. Don’t ask yourself whether you’re asleep. Think about trees.”

I’m lying in bed. A sleep mask covers my eyes. A tangle of wires covers my left hand. At the tip of my ring finger, a sensor measures my heart rate. A flexible length of plastic embedded with circuits stretches from my palm to the top of my middle finger. This will record the hypnic jerks and spastic opening-hand motions that signal my entry into hypnagogia, the first stage of sleep, where thoughts slip free of conscious control.

There’s a laptop on the bedside table; the screen shows fluctuating green and red lines. Adam Haar Horowitz, who is running the experiment, speaks to me over Zoom, monitoring my somatic information. The device I wear is called a Dormio. It was developed by Adam and a team of professors and researchers at the MIT Media Lab to facilitate “dream incubation,” the shaping of dreams according to words or images chosen by the dreamer. I’m wearing a prototype. Adam envisions a time when the components of the Dormio will be widely available; anyone will be able to download its blueprint and, with a few cheap premade circuits, construct her own dream incubator.

The way it works is simple. The device connects to a website where you can record a voice message to yourself—“think about trees”—that will play as you begin to fall asleep. Dormio detects when you enter hypnagogia, waits a short period, then awakens you and prompts you to describe what you’re experiencing, and sends the recording to your hard drive. You can also alter the parameters of awakening, which enables you to enter deeper or shallower levels of sleep. This first time, Adam is manning the controls himself; his is the voice reminding me to think about trees.

I settle into bed. The Dormio feels light on my hand, and I soon forget about it. My eyes are closed under the mask.

“Hold the image of a tree in your mind.”

I’m not going to be able to do this, I think. A spark of nervous energy runs through my legs.

“Relax. Don’t ask yourself whether you’re asleep. Think about trees.”

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Illustrations by Beppe Giacobbe

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Click the link below for the article:

https://harpers.org/

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